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Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

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Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#71

Post by 101008 »

Producing handwriting is a problem a group of people I belong to is facing. We work (free, on our free time), detecting forgeried signatures of a celebrity on eBay (forgeries that can go to thousdans of dollars).

Forgers are not good imitating signatures, but they discovered how to create the celebrity handwriting using an autopen, which means is harder everyday to distinguish real ones from fake ones. Collectors are used to them - and we track eBay sellers, buyers, etc, so we have an idea of who is who, but people who just want to buy a signed book for a birthday present, may end paying thousdans of dollars but something fake that has no value.

I see the importance of projects like this, but in the other hand, I cant help thinking that every piece of tech that imitates human behaviour can be used for bad.

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#72

Post by alexanderskates »

fps_doug wrote: post #53
sjv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The model was trained on a relatively small dataset which has few occurrences of the letter x, almost none of which are in cursive. As you've found, asking the model to write out an x in a cursive style can totally derail the generation process.

Any ELI5 for people who know close to nothing about NN, AI, machine learning etc? Like, how does one letter it doesn't know how to write well make it skip/mess up the following ones too? I mean, "derail" seems a fitting description to what I'm seeing, but how ?

The "handwriting" data for this model is basically the coordinates of a pen. The length of the string representation of the text is very different from the length of the coordinate representation of the text, therefore the model "learns" a window corresponding to when it is drawing the current letter, and when to start the next letter. For these letters, as the model doesn't learn how long this window should be, nor how to transition from it to the next letter, it gets stuck and outputs nonsense.

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#73

Post by wallawe »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #36

I've noticed that I get junk mail now that appears hand written. They go so far as to depress the paper as if with pen in a convincing way. They seem indistinguishable except that they are marketing. I'm left wondering if there is some new innovation here combined with popularity in some marketing newsletter. I went looking for the device that could do this and have come up empty-handed. Does anyone know what could c…

Even with the Axidraw, it's really hard to produce notes at scale. There are a handful of companies that have built out proprietary machines to do this e.g. https://www.handwrite.io (disclaimer: I'm a cofounder) but as far as I know there aren't any readily available for purchase.

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#74

Post by aketchum »

sjv wrote: post #5

Non-statistical methods of imitating handwriting are always fairly easy to identify as synthetic due to the uniformity of strokes and unnatural kerning (among other things). Even methods which incorporate random variations don't hide these artifacts sufficiently well. In my opinion, the only way to generate synthetic handwriting which is convincingly real is to use statistical methods (i.e. machine learning) to model…

How much data is needed to train the model to replicate a specific person's handwriting? Could this recreate my hand writing with less than a page of notes in my own handwriting?

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#75

Post by ldd »

mushishi wrote: post #64
sjv wrote: post #5

Non-statistical methods of imitating handwriting are always fairly easy to identify as synthetic due to the uniformity of strokes and unnatural kerning (among other things). Even methods which incorporate random variations don't hide these artifacts sufficiently well. In my opinion, the only way to generate synthetic handwriting which is convincingly real is to use statistical methods (i.e. machine learning) to model…

Hi, I like this, and found your project at Github. Could you add licence to your project, please! https://github.com/sjvasquez/handwriting-synthesis

I second this. Please add a license!

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#76

Post by grayhatter »

xmprt wrote: post #40
_ZeD_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing things down is a known method of studying. I don't envy your son, he should still write to effectively study

Is it though? I've heard very often that lecturing in this fashion is the most inefficient way of transmitting information from a slide onto a notebook without being understood by anyone writing it. If you're processing what you're seeing and summarizing then maybe that works but I think what worked best for me was always asking questions about the material.

He says known method, not known good method.

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#77

Post by fizixer »

sjv wrote: post #25
fizixer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. If you don't mind, did you use Graves 2013 RNN or something recent/more advanced?

Yes, it's mostly based on that. Primary difference is that this model adds an inference model (VAE style), which allows you to a) sample style vectors from a latent distribution b) do so more efficiently than the priming mechanism described in that paper.

Thanks. Great work.

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#78

Post by TT3351 »

101008 wrote: post #71

Producing handwriting is a problem a group of people I belong to is facing. We work (free, on our free time), detecting forgeried signatures of a celebrity on eBay (forgeries that can go to thousdans of dollars). Forgers are not good imitating signatures, but they discovered how to create the celebrity handwriting using an autopen, which means is harder everyday to distinguish real ones from fake ones. Collectors are…

Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it. I recommend the Orson Welles film F is for Fake.

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#79

Post by gfxgirl »

maneesh wrote: post #38
sjv wrote: post #5

Non-statistical methods of imitating handwriting are always fairly easy to identify as synthetic due to the uniformity of strokes and unnatural kerning (among other things). Even methods which incorporate random variations don't hide these artifacts sufficiently well. In my opinion, the only way to generate synthetic handwriting which is convincingly real is to use statistical methods (i.e. machine learning) to model…

Wow! How did you do this? Any tutorials or methods that would be helpful to learn how to produce something like that?

From the github project

https://arxiv.org/abs/1308.0850

https://github.com/sjvasquez/handwriting-synthesis

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#80

Post by navanchauhan »

jsjohnst wrote: post #60
navanchauhan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, I did use the write button. It works on my laptop though. I checked the console and it was indeed throwing an error "Error: Backend name 'webgl' not found in registry"

Were you using actual Safari or an app’s stripped down UIWebView? If Safari, then I’m guessing you have a content blocker that’s stopping access to WebGL.

The actual browser.

I am only running Pi-Hole on my network but then again if that was a problem it would not have worked on my MacBook either

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